The only reason, ultimately, that the US and NATO
are still in country here is to support a publicly funded war,
ultimately for private profit.
Since the inception of the US/NATO occupation, cheap, pure heroin has been flowing like wine, the dollars are getting laundered by corporate banks.
IF the TAPI pipeline ever gets built, bringing natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, there will be a lot of corporate profit. If the wealth of minerals is ever exploited, there will be a lot of corporate profit. And China is already making moves toward developing a copper mine here.
Though China is hardly interested in cleaning up NATO’s mess, it can ill afford to do nothing as Afghanistan stumbles into its post-American future. A failed state on China’s borders would be serious enough; one controlled by Islamist extremists who might offer support to insurgents in Xinjiang would be even worse. Nor is Afghanistan a place that a resource-hungry nation like China would want to ignore, even if it could. The $1 trillion value placed on Afghanistan’s makes the country a prize as yet unclaimed, for the most part, by multinational oil and mining corporations. The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) took a first slice of the pie late last year, with the China Metallurgical Construction Co. having already committed $3.5bn to Afghanistan’s Aynak copper mine – the biggest investment anyone has yet dared to make in an Afghan business venture. Nonetheless, these are probably just first steps for China Inc.
And it is a race to see which other countries' corporations will win the big business prizes here.
Since the inception of the US/NATO occupation, cheap, pure heroin has been flowing like wine, the dollars are getting laundered by corporate banks.
IF the TAPI pipeline ever gets built, bringing natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, there will be a lot of corporate profit. If the wealth of minerals is ever exploited, there will be a lot of corporate profit. And China is already making moves toward developing a copper mine here.
Though China is hardly interested in cleaning up NATO’s mess, it can ill afford to do nothing as Afghanistan stumbles into its post-American future. A failed state on China’s borders would be serious enough; one controlled by Islamist extremists who might offer support to insurgents in Xinjiang would be even worse. Nor is Afghanistan a place that a resource-hungry nation like China would want to ignore, even if it could. The $1 trillion value placed on Afghanistan’s makes the country a prize as yet unclaimed, for the most part, by multinational oil and mining corporations. The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) took a first slice of the pie late last year, with the China Metallurgical Construction Co. having already committed $3.5bn to Afghanistan’s Aynak copper mine – the biggest investment anyone has yet dared to make in an Afghan business venture. Nonetheless, these are probably just first steps for China Inc.
And it is a race to see which other countries' corporations will win the big business prizes here.
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